In the Gospel of John, we are told that the first words of Jesus spoken to His disciples after the Resurrection were “Peace be with you.” Those words were a Hebrew greeting. But coming from Jesus in that moment of reunion with His disciples, the fact that He repeated the words twice, and that as He said those words He showed them the wounds of His crucifixion, point to a deeper importance.
Before Jesus miraculously appeared in the upper room to reveal Himself as risen from the dead, the doors of the room had been locked because the disciples feared the retribution of the Jewish authorities. One can imagine that the hearts of the Apostles were also filled with sadness, anger and despair.
Perhaps there were recriminations among them because of their collective, as well as individual, guilt for having abandoned Jesus in His moment of trial. In any case, it must have seemed that their whole future, progressively built upon their love of Jesus formed over their three years with Him, had been ripped from them by the crucifixion, leaving no hope.
The greeting of peace from Jesus, then, was not simply a social greeting. It was the healing gift of God in the wake of the overthrow of sin by Jesus’s death and resurrection. That gift of peace is an important mark of God’s love for the world.
By our human standards, Jesus would have been well justified in chastising His followers for their loss of faith in a moment of crisis. Even short of blunt and direct criticism of their failures, the display of His wounds, done in a certain way, could have been an unspoken rebuke.
Instead, we are told the disciples rejoiced. The presence of Christ healed their deeply wounded hearts. Even Jesus’s wounds were to become not a reproach but proof of the reason for the disciples’ faith and love for Him, who sacrificed Himself totally for them.
The gift of God’s peace is needed by the human race at many levels. We first think of peace as the absence of war, ideally in the context of a balance of power that limits future conflicts. That of course is an indispensable part of peace on earth.
We should pray for the cessation of war. But real peace requires the fostering of love between peoples and the respect for the human dignity of all. It is only the purification and sanctification of hearts and memories that will truly solidify harmony between peoples.
God’s peace also is a gift for every individual person. In our broken world, hearts are longing for tranquility. Our own society seems to have been overtaken by harsh public rhetoric that seeks to attack and destroy others. That’s a tactic employed by all sides, it should be said. In recent years, that discourse has been liberally sprinkled with profanities that coarsen the hearts of speakers and listeners.
The lack of peace is also felt in families. Our high rate of marriage breakups is known to deeply affect hearts and emotions, especially of the children involved. Studies also show that our young people report high levels of stress, anxiety and depression. And many of our elderly are suffering from the epidemic of isolation toward the end of life.
The teaching of the Second Vatican Council reminds us, “Peace is therefore the fruit also of love … Peace on earth, born of love for one’s neighbor, is the sign and the effect of the peace of Christ that flows from God the Father.” (Gaudium et Spes, N. 78).
Our Catholic faith invites us to join the disciples. They rejoiced at the gift of Christ’s peace, even with the task of witnessing and living their newfound faith still standing before them. Our world and our society need our faithful witness to the fact that God offers us the peace of heart that the world cannot give.
